


high tide came (and brought you in)

by sumaru



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beach Volleyball, Alternate Universe - Olympics, Chocolate Box Exchange Treat, Happy Oikage New Year, M/M, Sports Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-24 08:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17700710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sumaru/pseuds/sumaru
Summary: Do their feet ever even touch the ground? #Paris2024Didn't think you could build a #beachvolleyball team on nothing but jump serves and feints and good old fashioned bitch u thought, and yet here we are😔👌Doesn’t anybody else remember when Team Japan fucked up so bad at the Asian Games—Oikawa remembers.





	high tide came (and brought you in)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chronology](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronology/gifts).



> I'll always follow you into the dark with my pockets stuffed full of golden promises and every single stupid weepy emotional crown of light I can muster. Have the loveliest day, buchou!

 

 

 

"It’s really—" Oikawa breathes deep. The summer sun is a golden weight perched ready on their shoulders; holding its breath, too.

"—big?" The water bottle pauses midway to Kageyama’s mouth.

"— _a bit like home_ ," Oikawa huffs, poking Kageyama right in the middle of his furrowed brow as he squints up at the Eiffel Tower. The wrought iron pierces the crystal sky over the beach volleyball venue like a challenge — this is how high you have to jump, this is how high it means to truly fly. "So rude, Tobio! I'm giving you a pep talk! Your senpai is filling you so generously with all the pep you could ever ask for, you should be more moved!"

Nobody really expected them to get this far. The only Japanese team to qualify for men's beach volleyball at these Olympic Games, the two of them still so young and round-cheeked, someone had joked you could practically smell the country green hills of Miyagi in the too tall shadows they cast on the sand.

_Do their feet ever even touch the ground? #Paris2024_

_Didn't think you could build a #beachvolleyball team on nothing but jump serves and feints and good old fashioned bitch u thought, and yet here we are_ 😔👌

_Doesn’t anybody else remember when Team Japan fucked up so bad at the Asian Games—_

Oikawa remembers.

Oikawa remembers spending countless interviews with a smile that was equal parts bared teeth and charm. Oikawa remembers running along the shores of Okinawa intent on outpacing an entire year that had ended in a jump serve that had once been his, hitting him like lightning striking twice. Oikawa remembers— oh, the terrible knot of his feelings twisting and twisting into the night until there was nothing left of him on the fine-grained sand except this. 

An endless blue sky that had opened up into pouring rain. 

Ocean blue waves stripping him down bare and new. 

Blue eyes locked on his as Kageyama had looked right at him, unwavering even on the ever shifting sand that had been this _thing_ between them, keeping pace the entire time.

The summer rain had flattened Kageyama’s bangs into a glossy black wing across his forehead. Oikawa remembers how warm Kageyama’s skin had been when he had swept the wet strands aside, like Kageyama was burning ready to go even then, long callused fingers intent and sure as they had circled Oikawa’s wrist in return.

Beach volleyball was about a team of two — a furious, all-out play between what you give to each other, and what you take, until the whistle called you home. It had been the salt of the sea in Oikawa’s mouth and Kageyama shouting stupid nonsense about _If everything is a feint they won’t know when your set is real_ and _It’s real to me_ over the roaring of the waves, to make him realise that Kageyama wasn’t _just_ relentlessly taking everything on the sand.

Kageyama chasing after everything that was his — that was just Kageyama, completely and single-mindedly and ridiculously, stupidly Kageyama, asking for more of _Oikawa_ , too.

"Smile for the fans, Tobio-chan!" Oikawa tilts his phone so the Eiffel Tower angles just so in the background.

Iwa-chan might have called him a dipshit for taking selfies during match breaks, but Iwa-chan didn’t have an adoring legion of fans that had criss-crossed Japan with them during that terrible, off-rhythm year, gossiping fondly about how Kageyama-kun’s arms had filled out so nicely from all those new spiking drills, how Oikawa-san’s jump serve had learned itself a wholly monstrous edge.

“That’s just how I smile!”

Kageyama grimaces with all of his teeth as Oikawa throws up a v-sign, and he knows his followers are going to absolutely _lose it_ over this trademark Kageyama smile. More than Oikawa hiking up his short shorts on laundry day. More than Kageyama accidentally borrowing Oikawa’s short shorts on laundry day. More than their sets that chased from one side of the court to the other, a mirror held up to a mirror, dazzling their opponents under the combined glare of their shine.

Oikawa wants to crystallise this feeling forever, maybe.

"But Oikawa-san, it’s not because the Ei—” Kageyama’s mouth twists as his red visor casts a warm glow on his cheeks, a sunrise flush matched perfectly to the red of his jersey. Oikawa eyes his SNOW colour filters critically. No cat ear or glitter effect could smooth out that scowl, and to be perfectly honest, Oikawa is no longer sure he wants to. "—Eff— Eiffel Tower reminds me of Tokyo.”

"Oh?” Oikawa winks at the camera. _Click, click_.

"It’s the sand where we play together.” Kageyama’s breath ghosts over his cheek. "That’s what makes it feel like home.”

Kageyama leans in to flash his own stilted v-sign at the camera, and the sudden press of his shoulder against Oikawa’s is so warm and solid and assured, nothing, _nothing_ on this glittering summer morning in Paris with the thunder of the crowd chanting their names, waiting for two green boys to bloom anew under the eye of the boundless summer sun, crowned in the dizzying light that had traveled all the way from the other side of the world on the back of their hard work, to this finals match — nothing could stop the feeling of already having taken it all home.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Oikawa had been right about the fans going wild for Kageyama’s smile.

But it was the one that fluttered at the edges, pressed clumsily, too excitedly against the corner of Oikawa’s mouth, eyes crinkled up with the golden glow that hung weightless and mirrored against Oikawa’s throat. No filter needed. Just the summer sun rising brilliant across their shoulders, lighting up the white sand where they truly belong.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> kageyama: HASHTAG ✌️🥇💙  
> oikawa: you don't write HASHTAG you just use the # you useless kouhai  
> oikawa: never touch my instagram again
> 
> [These hands had to let it go free.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9VzPf8a4kI)


End file.
